


Time marches on

by xieathe



Category: Next Avengers
Genre: Asgard, F/M, Gen, Headcanon, Post canon, immortal vs mortal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-18
Updated: 2012-09-18
Packaged: 2017-11-14 12:05:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/515061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xieathe/pseuds/xieathe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Torunn Thorsdottir is an Asgardian warrior; her brothers and lover are still only human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time marches on

She’s seventeen the first time she kisses Francis.

They’re helping finish renovations on a hospital in a cleared out section of Ultra City, laying beams and lifting walls. It’s nothing ground-shattering, nothing planned, but as he hands her a hammer she leans in and presses her lips to his, tasting salt and sweat and sawdust as she does so. It’s probably the first time Francis has even been speechless, and she laughs at him before going back to work.

Six months later, they have sex for the first time. James finds out a week after and knocks Francis out with his shield.

They break up when she’s twenty-two, because Francis insists on taking care of his own and she wants to go out into the world and salvage what she can. The Avengers aren’t just an American concept, she argues; they aren’t only here to save a specific few people. But he’s stubborn and devoted to the ones he helped survive and so they part on uneasy terms. She doesn’t see him again for three years.

Azari eventually leaves for Wakanda, as well; Pym finds his way south to Brazil. They keep in touch using the remnants of technology they can find, helping cull what robots remain in Ultron’s wake, putting down revolts and tyranny where they find it. The world doesn’t need more dictators, they say, especially not humans trying to subjugate other humans.

Only James stays with Francis, rebuilding the mansion the red head remembers from his dreams. Slowly the city sheds the artifice Ultron built, replacing it with living, breathing communities. Refugees from around the country begin to filter in; the two Avengers oversee the peace, but leave the politics to those who want to rule. It’s not always a happy arrangement, but they’re content in what they do.

When she returns, Francis smiles and welcomes her fondly, almost like he doesn’t remember the argument they had when she left. Maybe he doesn’t; it never comes up. But they pick up where they left off, and the mansion seems livelier with her around. Pym eventually returns from his retreat, having perfected some science or another, and Azari returns as a delegate from his people. Wakanda is rebuilding, and so many other nations with it. He seems a little sad about it when he speaks, but she figures it’s just because he misses his family, like she did.

She never does settle down with Francis. They complement each other in so many ways, but it’s not quite enough. He seems content with the arrangement, though, and she’s glad for his company when she has it. An Asgardian warrior has no need for romance, anyway, but the times he comes to her bed at night are not unwelcome. Even James seems to accept it, though he isn’t above hanging his shield outside her door on occasion just to mess with the archer.

She’s thirty-four when she returns to Asgard on a summons from her father. When she was younger, she chose Earth and her family there, and she continues to do so now, though she takes some time to visit with her godly relatives. The others have never seen Asgard, after all, and she wants to tell them stories of the shining city, just as she told them stories of Russia, and Afghanistan and Tibet.

It never occurs to her they’re getting older. She knows they are, on some level, but they’re still strong men, still in their prime, and so the subtle differences never really occur to her. Pym’s attempt at facial hair is met with raucous laughter until he shaves it; James complains about the specks of white he finds in his red locks; Azari sprouts like a vine, standing tall and regal over his siblings.

And Francis … he just looks tired. He still smiles, still cracks jokes, still threatens violence first and asks questions later. But she watches him at night when he thinks she’s fallen asleep, sees the way he sits on the edge of the bed, shoulders bowed with the weight of the world he’s placed on them, the worry in his eyes that he isn’t living up to the expectations of his father. James is their leader, but Francis never quite accepted that, not entirely, and he takes his responsibilities to this city seriously. She worries someday it’ll be too much for him.

Her trips to Asgard become more frequent after she turns fifty. The cogs in the world are beginning to move more smoothly, society picking itself back up and moving along. Pym heads the Tetra-continental Organization for Non-lethal technologY (Tony would have approved, he argues, after Francis punches him in the shoulder for choosing such a sentimental name), guiding the geniuses of the world in re-establishing infrastructure, agriculture, rebuilding the networks and energy used before Ultron destroyed it all. Azari eventually takes his place in the United Nations, though he declines to be president of the organization. It’s best it goes back to the way it was when the world was whole, he argues. It’s what his parents would have wanted. James takes up the mantle of Captain America, standing for everything his father once did. He goes so far as to wear a modified uniform, and his duties take him outside of Ultra City more often than not.

And Francis, as he always has, stays behind. He dabbles a bit in biology, though he never has his mother’s knack for it. He watches the others go about their lives, watches the city slowly settle into an unfamiliar way of life, and he patrols and protects, building his own underground networks. Bobbi would be proud, if she were alive to see it. James is the face of justice in the world, but Francis is the hand that serves it, at least in his city on the sea.

In the absence of Ultron, humans begin to replace his evil with their own. The world can only be at peace for so long, and some of those born long after the genocide sixty years ago aren’t as fond of the Avengers as their parents before them. And as they have since they were children, the Avengers stand up to fight it, to keep injustice and depravity from taking over the world they fought so hard to save.

She realises then how old they are, as they gather their gear for yet another day of keeping evil at bay. James and Azari fare best, and Pym has the advantage of youth. But Francis gives them no quarter, body ravaged by age and war and responsibility. He looks so old, she thinks, but never says it. He’s the only one among them who’s truly human; he’s the one with the most to prove. She can understand that warrior’s pride. It’s part of why she loves him so.

They bury him later that week, after the revolt has been put down, the evil ones routed. It was a warrior’s death, and she grieves appropriately, standing over his grave with a tankard of ale and tears in her eyes. James joins her, then Azari; Pym cries quietly behind them all, but no one minds. Francis would have let him, too.

This time, she remains in Asgard longer than usual, trying in vain to run from her grief. She sits on the Bifrost and looks down on the Nine Realms, or curls up beneath the branches of the World Tree, struggling to make sense of the world. Thor leaves her to her thoughts for the most part. The one time he does join her, it’s to remind her she still has a family on Midgard, and perhaps she’d like to see them again before it’s too late. She leaves the next day.

Pym goes next, slipping away quietly in his sleep. He’s smiling, like he’s having a wonderful dream, and that’s what they write on his tombstone. They bury him next to Tony and Francis; his grandchildren tend to the site once a week and tell their grandpa about their latest science experiments. Sometimes the Scavenger children come as well. She tries to stay away from the mansion on those days. So does James. They’ve never really known how to handle their grief.

Azari’s death is an international affair, with dignitaries from across the world journeying to Wakanda to pay their respects to the deceased head of state and his remaining heirs. The Black Panther is remembered fondly for his fierceness and sincerity, for the way he managed to keep others on track, to mediate between disputing parties and to bring solidarity to voices from myriad cultures. His son takes his place with the fanfare awarded a king, and she leaves shortly after the ceremony with James.

Maybe it’s the super serum running through his veins from his father, or the longevity formula that ran through his mother’s, but James continues on in his duties. Captain America is someone else now, bequeathed to a younger girl with the gumption and faith James had in his youth. Now he simply oversees, helps run the networks Francis built years ago, keeps tabs on the burgeoning superhero racket like his father before him. She visits on occasion, and he smiles at her, his blue eyes full of life that his body can’t quite match anymore. There’s sorrow there, as well, and loss, but James is nothing if not hardy. That’s never changed about him in all these years.

She’s in Asgard when she hears the news. Thor grips her shoulder, eyes filled with a sorrow she cannot quite understand but knows all the same, and she buries her face in his chest and sobs until there are no tears left. An Asgardian entourage escorts her back to Earth in full regalia for the procession, where they carry his body through the streets to the mansion for his final resting place beside his brothers and dad. His shield is left on the grave; his protoge carries one designed by Pym, after all, and the cracked weapon means more as a gravestone than anything else ever could.

She seals the mansion away with Asgardian magic, keeping the building and its occupants protected from the outside world. Only those she deems worthy are allowed to pass, and she visits often herself to tell them of her life in Asgard, or the goings-on of mortal men. She visits long after their descendents stop, when their names pass into history and legend, and she tells their story to her own children years after that.

She is an immortal Asgardian warrior, and so long as she lives, so too will her brothers and the human boy she loved.


End file.
